The Role of Contract Types for Employees’ Public Service Motivation

Where Does the Good Shepherd Go? Civic Virtue and Sorting into Public Sector Employment

“…This study contributes to the existing research by analyzing how civic virtue relates to public sector employment in addition to other relevant motives (altruism, risk aversion, laziness and financial motivation). We extend previous work on the role of civic virtue for public sector employment (Grund and Thommes, 2017;Luechinger et al, 2010) by considering a large set of motives in a large dataset. Only employers who understand the entire set of motives of their employees will be able to attract and retain suitable individuals and to design appropriate incentive structures (Delfgaauw and Dur, 2007.…”

“…In contrast to altruism, the relationship between civic virtue and public sector employment has barely been investigated; two exceptions are Grund and Thommes () and Luechinger et al . ().…”

“…-Being there for others' (see Becker et al, 2012;Dur and van Lent, 2018;Dur and Zoutenbier, 2015), civic virtue is assessed with the item 'How important are the following things to you? -Being politically and/or socially committed' (see Grund and Thommes, 2017;Luechinger et al, 2010).…”

“…In contrast to altruism, the relationship between civic virtue and public sector employment has barely been investigated; two exceptions are Grund and Thommes (2017) and Luechinger et al (2010). This lack of literature is particularly interesting considering the high relevance of civic virtue for good government (Bowles and Hwang, 2008).…”

“…To estimate socialization effects, some studies analyze the effects of changes between the private and public sector on prosocial motivation or behavior. The results of these studies are mixed, pointing either to no socialization effects (Gregg et al, 2011), a decrease in volunteer work among older workers in the public sector (Dur and van Lent, 2018), or an increase in altruism in the public sector and a decrease in civic virtue in the private sector (Grund and Thommes, 2017). We exploit the longitudinal dimension of our data to account for causality problems and thereby extend the existing research on civic virtue and public sector employment (Grund and Thommes, 2017;Luechinger et al, 2010), respectively altruism and public sector employment (e.g.…”